When the term spinet is used to designate a harpsichord, typically
what is meant is the bentside spinet, described in this section. For
other uses, see below.
The bentside spinet shares most of its characteristics with the
full-size instrument, including action, soundboard, and case
construction. What primarily distinguishes the spinet is the angle of
its strings: whereas in a full-size harpsichord, the strings are at a
90 degree angle to the keyboard (that is, they are parallel to the
player's gaze); and in a virginals they are parallel to the keyboard,
in a spinet the strings are at an angle of about 30 degrees to the
keyboard, going toward the right.
The case of a bentside spinet is approximately triangular. The side on
the right is usually bent concavely (hence the name of the
instrument), curving away from the player toward the right rear
corner. The longest side is adjacent to and parallel with the bass
strings, going from the right rear corner to a location on the
player's left. The front side of the spinet contains the keyboard.
Typically, there are very short sides at the right rear and on the
left, connecting the bentside to the long side and the long side to
the front.
The other major aspect of spinet design is that the strings are
arranged in pairs. The gap between the two strings of a pair is about
four millimetres, and the wider gap between pairs is about ten. The
jacks (which pluck the strings (see harpsichord)) are arranged in
pairs as well, placed in the wider gap. They face in opposite
directions, plucking the adjacent string on either side of the wider
gap. The fact that half of the gaps are four millimetres instead of
ten makes it possible to crowd more strings together into a smaller
case.

Diagram showing the arrangement of jacks and strings in a bentside
spinet. For explanation, see main text. In the picture above, the
jacks are concealed beneath the jack rail at the center of the
instrument.

The disadvantage of the paired design is that it generally limits the
spinet to a single choir of strings, at eight-foot pitch, although a
double-strung spinet by John Player is known [Morris – references
below]. In a full-size harpsichord, the registers that guide the jacks
can be shifted slightly to one side, permitting the player to control
whether or not that particular set of strings is sounded. This is
impossible in a spinet, due to the alternating orientation of the
jacks. For an exception to this point, see "spinettone", below.

SpinetSpinet by Zenti from 1637, now in the Musical Instrument Museum in
Brussels

The angling of the strings also had consequences for tone quality:
generally, it was not possible to make the plucking points as close to
the nut as in a regular harpsichord. Thus spinets normally had a
slightly different tone quality, with fewer higher harmonics. Spinets
also had smaller soundboards than regular harpsichords, and normally
had a weaker sound. For these reasons, the spinet was normally only a
domestic instrument, purchased to save money and conserve domestic
space.
History[edit]
HarpsichordHarpsichord historian
Frank Hubbard wrote in 1967, "the earliest
[bentside] spinet known to me was made by
Hieronymus de ZentisHieronymus de Zentis in
1631. It is quite possible that Zentis was the inventor of the type so
widely copied in other countries." He further notes that the spinet in
France was sometimes called the épinette à l'italienne, supporting
an Italian origin.
In England, builders included John Player, Thomas Barton, Charles
Haward, Stephen Keene, Cawton Aston, and Thomas Hitchcock.
The spinet was later developed into the spinettone ("big spinet") by
Bartolomeo CristoforiBartolomeo Cristofori (1655–1731), the inventor of the piano. The
spinettone incorporated multiple choirs of strings, with a disposition
of 1 × 8′, 1 × 4′, and used the same ingenious mechanism for
changing stops that Cristofori had earlier used for his oval spinet.
The spinettone was a local success among the musicians of the Medici
court (Montanari 2002), and Cristofori eventually built a total of
four of them.[1]
Spinets are occasionally made today, sometimes from kits, and serve
the same purpose they always have, of saving money and space.
Other uses of "spinet" for harpsichords[edit]

The pentagonal spinet was not a spinet in the sense given above, but
rather a virginal; its strings were parallel to the keyboard.
Typically, the pentagonal spinet was more compact than other types of
virginals, as the pentagon shape arose from lopping off the corners of
the original rectangular virginal design.
More generally, the word spinet was not always very sharply defined in
former times, particularly in its French and Italian cognate forms
épinette and spinetta. Thus, for example, when Bartolomeo Cristofori
invented a new kind of virginals in 1688, he called it the "spinetta
ovale", "oval spinet".
Nomenclature[edit]

Modern bentside spinet built by Clavecins Rouaud, Paris

In earlier times when English spelling was less standardized, "spinet"
was sometimes spelled "spinnet" or "spinnit". "Spinet" is standard
today.
SpinetSpinet derives from the Italian spinetta, which in 17th-century
Italian was a word used generally for all quilled instruments,
especially what in Elizabethan/
Jacobean EnglishJacobean English were called virginals.
The specific Italian word for a virginals is spinetta a tabola.
Likewise, the French derivation from spinetta, épinette, is
specifically what the virginals is called in French, although the word
is also used for any other small quilled instrument, whether a small
harpsichord or a clavichord. In German, Spinett and Querflügel are
used.
A dumb spinet is a manichord or "clavichord or clarichord", according
to the 1913 edition of Webster's Dictionary.
Spinets as pianos[edit]

SpinetSpinet piano made by Baldwin and sold under the brand name Acrosonic.
Date of manufacture unknown.

A spinet piano manufactured by Gulbransen

Detail of the interior structure of the Gulbransen spinet shown above.
The drop action, lying below the level of the keyboard, can be seen,
as well as the extreme angling of the strings needed to provide
sufficient length of strings within the limited case height. Click on
image for expanded view.

The spinet piano, manufactured from the 1930s until recent times, was
the culmination of a trend among manufacturers to make pianos smaller
and cheaper. It served the purpose of making pianos available for a
low price, for owners who had little space for a piano. Many spinet
pianos still exist today, left over from their period of manufacture.
The defining characteristic of the spinet was its drop action
(sometimes called indirect blow action). In this device, the keys did
not engage the action directly; rather they pulled upward on rods
called "stickers," which in turn pulled upward on levers located below
the level of the keyboard, which in turn engaged the action. The
stickers were sufficiently long that the hammer heads (the highest
part of the action) ended up at roughly the same vertical level as the
keyboard.
Thanks to the drop action, spinet pianos could be made very small; the
top of a spinet rose only a few inches above the level of the keyboard
itself (see image above). However, according to piano author Larry
Fine,[2] the cost in quality was considerable. The stickers were
"often noisy and troublesome." Moreover, to make room for them, the
keys had to be made shorter, resulting in "very poor leverage" and
thus a poor sense of touch and control for the player. Lastly, the
very short strings of the spinet resulted in a narrow range of
harmonics and thus in poor tone quality.
The spinet was also the bane of piano technicians. Concerning the
difficulty of servicing them, Fine writes

Spinets ... are very difficult to service because even the smallest
repair requiring removal of the action becomes a major ordeal. Each of
the connecting stickers has to be disconnected and tied up to the
action and all the keys have to be removed from the piano before the
action can be lifted out.[3]

History[edit]
According to piano historian Arthur Loesser (1954), the first spinet
piano was offered to the public in May 1935, by an American
manufacturer Loesser does not identify. The instrument was initially a
success, being the only kind of piano that many people could afford in
the depths of the Great Depression. (According to Loesser, the price
could be less than $300, "about twenty-five percent lower than ... a
small upright of 1924.") Loesser notes that the spinet was not
entirely new, as very small pianos had been manufactured at various
times in the 19th century.
After the 1930s, many people still continued to purchase spinets; a
1947 study showed that about 50 percent of all pianos sold during that
production year were pianos strung vertically of 37 inches in height
or less.[4] The spinet enjoyed decades of popularity after the 1930s,
but production was halted in the early 1990s.
Spinets as organs[edit]
Main article: Electronic organ §
SpinetSpinet organs (1949–)
The spinet organ, a product of the mid-20th century, served the same
function (domestic context, low cost) that was served by spinet
harpsichords and spinet pianos. The spinet organ physically resembled
a small upright piano, and presented simplified controls and functions
that were both less expensive to produce and less intimidating to
learn than other organs.
Notes[edit]

^ Source for this paragraph except as noted: Kottick (2003, 213–214)
^ Fine, Larry (2001) The
PianoPiano Book (4th ed. Jamaica Plain,
Massachusetts: Brookside Press, 2001; ISBN 1-929145-01-2)
^ Not all spinets had this design; some utilized a method of making a
railing for the rods to terminate sticker connection to the keys. This
is commonly found on older Baldwin and Wurlitzer pianos and is easier
to service.
^ http://bluebookofpianos.com/spin1947.htm

Hubbard, Frank (1967) Three Centuries of
HarpsichordHarpsichord Making.
Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press;
ISBN 0-674-88845-6.
Kottick, Edward (2003) A history of the harpsichord. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-34166-3,
ISBN 978-0-253-34166-2.
Montanari, Giuliana (2002) "The oval spinets and Grind Prince
Ferdinando de' Medici's collection of quilled instruments," in La
spinetta del 1690/The 1690 Oval Spinet, edited by Gabriele
Rossi-Rognoni, (Sillabe for the Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence).
Offers some information on the spinettone.
The New Grove Dictionary of Music and MusiciansThe New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians offers detailed
coverage of the harpsichord spinet; see under "Spinet".
Morris, Stephen (1986) The English Bentside
SpinetSpinet 1660 to 1730, a
detailed look at four makers (Haward, Keene, Player, Hitchcock) London
College of Furniture, BTEC HND Dissertation